Hi all,

We see this question over and over in the forums;

"my image had x score why wasnt it accepted" or
"I see an image in FF with a lower score went through zomg!?!?".

So I thought I would write a post to hopefully explain the selection process a bit better, and dispel some myths. Many/most of you already know this, but hopefully this will be a useful resource to direct new users to, if they have any concerns in the future.

Shots are submitted into the New Submissions section, and they stay there for a minimum of 24 hours, and a maximum of 48 hours, before being rejected. Every 50 minutes or so, our resident janitor Scruffy approves the highest scoring image that has LESS than 24 hours left.

It may help to think of the first 24 hours as a vote gathering stage, and the 2nd 24 hours as the actual approval stage. Your image may be the highest scoring image with less than 24 hours left, but if another image with a higher score drops below the 24 hour mark before scruffy works his magic every 50 minutes, that image will go through ahead of yours.

So, the mathematically-minded of you would have figured out by now that Scruffy puts through about 30 images a day. But about 60/70 images a day [used to] go through to FF, some with scores which are a lot lower than you may expect. Here is where the moderators come in. The moderators will also put through good images which will not make it on score alone. This is why you see images with lower scores in FF.

In summary, forget about scores and just concentrate on making great looking, interesting images, and your image will have a good chance of making it, either through public vote or selection by a moderator.

That being said, sometimes images just dont make it. We cannot put through them all, everyone has had images which they loved but didnt make it, dont be too disappointed and keep trying!


Addendum:
Moderators do NOT reject snapshots. The ONLY reason a shot gets rejected, is because the community didn't rate it high enough, and that is an automated process. Moderators simply choose to save some shots from the community dustbin ;)

The current system works fine, that would make no tangible difference at all. The shots that scruffy would push through are pushed through by us anyway, generally speaking.

them00ch "It may help to think of the first 24 hours as a vote gathering stage, and the 2nd 24 hours as the actual approval stage. Your image may be the highest scoring image with less than 24 hours left, but if another image with a higher score drops below the 24 hour mark before scruffy works his magic every 56 minutes"

Question: Does that mean that if someone uploads an amazing screenshot next to ours the odds our against us ?

Other questions: when I write these lines there are 100 screenshots under 24hours, does that mean that only 1 out of 100 would be chosen ? How many shots are saved by moderators can we know ? What's the process ?

I'm still torned between trying to do hard to solve and not so obvious shots like the one I just uploaded or upload some obvious shots... (even though I have to admit my tape shot went through, guess it must have been a moderator's choice since the rates where low)

quote: "Other questions: when I write these lines there are 100 screenshots under 24hours, does that mean that only 1 out of 100 would be chosen ? How many shots are saved by moderators can we know ? What's the process ?"

The answers to all those questions are in the first post :)

To clarify, every 56 minutes the highest scoring shot with <24hours goes through automatically.

so around 26 shots get chosen automatically daily. About 80 go through total daily, which means around 55 shots are pushed through by moderators daily. This figure changes day-to-day.

quote: "Question: Does that mean that if someone uploads an amazing screenshot next to ours the odds our against us ?"

No more than if someone uploads an amazing shot within the same 24 hour period :)

quote: "I'm still torned between trying to do hard to solve and not so obvious shots like the one I just uploaded or upload some obvious shots... (even though I have to admit my tape shot went through, guess it must have been a moderator's choice since the rates where low)"

I think we spoke about this before, just take the shots you like. Someone previously said "if its a tough, little known movie, take an easy shot; if its a well-known, easily recognizable movie then take a tough shot". Its a good rule of thumb, but still not a guarantee. Just make sure the shots themselves look interesting, regardless of the importance in the story etc..

There are no rules or guarantees, just take the shots you like, if they consistenly dont make it, then try another approach. Sometimes we have great runs where all our shots go through, other times we only manage to get 1 in 5 through. Just keep trying, and dont get stressed. Once its uploaded its out of your hands :)

No it doesnt mean that at all, I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.

The shots once they pass the 24 hour mark, have another 24 hours to be selected. So they could all go through depending on score. Every 56 minutes a shot is chosen, so each shot has 24 chances to get through automatically. Or they could be pushed through manually.

No problem, I guess its complicated for a new person to the site.

red bars isnt the problem, its the black bars all around. There is a lot of info in the forum about how to remove them, and how to take shots in general. You can contact experienced uploaders or moderators with questions if you want. So, there should be no problem getting good shots. The resolution, by the way, has nothing to do with it....

sati you could search in the forum for old discussions and would find quite some answers.
Here's for example a thread about cutting black bars:

http://forum.whatthemovie.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=456&page=1#Item_25

In this discussion you also can find two useful links by MisterZob who shows the problem:

http://siboul.free.fr/wtm/red-index.html

and gives a tutorial on how to cut black bars:

http://siboul.free.fr/wtm/tutoWTM.html

Hope this helps.

you can.
I asked my fellows and the guy who rejected snapshots, as well as few uploaders.
If my snaps are going to be rejected in 2 days, I'm not uploading anymore, that all there is to it :)

And sati, there are hundreds of snapshots uploaded a day, and only a few make it, so a few rejects isn't something to worry about. Just keep trying!

@ luluthebeast : If you think the shot has been taken from another site, message me please and I will look into it.

Well, if you don't want to understand, bye! :D

I would just like to contribute an addendum to the original post, because I see many complaints on people's profiles about "moderators rejecting my snap". I just wanted to add a clarification to resolve this misconception :

"Moderators do NOT reject snapshots. The ONLY reason a shot gets rejected, is because the community didn't rate it high enough, and that is an automated process. Moderators simply choose to save some shots from the community dustbin ;)"

So next time a shot gets rejected, if you feel the need to blame someone, I am afraid you will have to blame the voters for not voting it high enough, not the moderator team. I understand there is an element of frustration in shots being rejected, and sometimes people just need to vent, but saying you hate the moderators for it is misguided anger.

"Your snap isn't selected" is a better way to put it I guess :) But I don't care anyhow!

"Your snapshot didn't get enough score to get through FF."

But basically, these days it is very difficult to have a shot in FF unless it went straight into FF because of its votes. Am I right?

Oh sorry, I missed that one.

@kinoute
LordMyst is right, mods can take favorites into account to approve a shot that wouldn't have made it.
But favorites are useless for automatic approval. They do count for SotD though.

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I succed in uploading anything like once a week.
The ratings are bad, at first I wanted to buy more awesome uploads but I don't think I want to pay money to the site, however If out of 20 shots I really want to upload here nothing will go through it may be just the only way.
Awesome uploads should be given for more stuff not just for the contest, the same people keep winning. We all participate, we all contribute why not give AU each time you level up or something. Anyways, efji 7,57 is, apparantly low, I saw shots with 7 favs and 7,70 getting rejected.

actually 7,57 is quite high comparing to other notes here, but not high enough :/ my every shot has around 7,50 and gets rejected, people tend to vote below 5 and shots get rejected.
I observed that the only chance you have it's if after 30 votes it's above 8. otherwise it will get rejected and counting on magically accepted is like counting on snow in the summer:)

Ok. When all my last submissions were killed because of "black bars" then I think I'll waste no more time here.

Have to agree with Asmodai here, looking at your page you've had 5 shots deleted in the last 8 days because of black bars. It doesn't even take a minute to crop the shot and remove the bars, and depending on the shot it can make a huge difference IMO (I often vote 1-2 points lower than I would've without the bars, if I feel they make the shot less appealing).

I kinda like black bars… This snap is great: http://whatthemovie.com/shot/111943

This is a good thing to know!

So far I thought black bars on two sides of the shot were ok (no matter if they are in the picture itself or added by wtm). In your example the shot is 711px × 400px and thus it has not only the big black bars but also 9 pixel of additional small black bars on both sides to fit the 720px-frame. Of course this is against the rule. It's like driving 5 mph too fast - it's up to the mod to decide if you are punished or just warned.

But if I understand you right now it is also not ok to have black bars even if they result in the shot having only 2 bbs in the frame? I'm asking because I already thought about leaving some of the upper and lower bbs of 16:9 shots to make them fill EXACTLY the 720 x 400 px-frame. Reason: I don't want the "you solved this shot"-bar to hide a part of the shot (if there is a possibility of letting it just hide a black bar). But it seems this would not be ok and I should rather not do it, right?

And regarding the warnings: I only checked Mutens profile, not his shots. So if you reminded him there you already did what I suggested. My bad :)